Indulging my love of poetry by posting a poem a day, every day... to inspire, delight and enlighten!

Monday, 2 July 2012

Day 11: Orange

Poetry is renowned for celebrating the small things. For making the ordinary extraordinary. For offering a zoomed-up view of these little accessories that make up our lives, and placing them into the high sphere of exultation, away from our lowly taken-for-granted quarters.

Apart from poetry, the only other state which offers such acute appreciation is love. When we are in love, the world sings to us. We notice everything. Feel the air on our faces, the swing in our step, and every little prop - such as an orange - becomes an object of such contemplation, a proof proper of our blissed up state, a catalyst that leads to the existential exclamation of 'I'm glad I exist.'

Yes, love does make poets of us all. And poetry? Poetry, makes lovers out of us all. Opens our eyes to the beauty of this world.

Wendy Cope is a tremendously funny poet, whose poems are simple lyrics underpinned with a blasé sarcasm and wit usually attacking men and relationships. But when she is in love, she's in love. Here's a wonderful lyric from her in such a state.

A perfect citrusy bright poem for a Monday, enjoy!

The Orange - Wendy Cope

At
lunchtime I bought a huge orange The size of it made us all laugh. I
peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave— They got quarters and I had a
half.

And that
orange it made me so happy, As ordinary things often do Just lately. The
shopping. A walk in the park This is peace and contentment. It's
new.

The rest
of the day was quite easy. I did all my jobs on my list And enjoyed them
and had some time over. I love you. I'm glad I exist.

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The poem is not a thing we see - it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life. ~Robert Penn Warren

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. ~Paul Engle

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. ~ Carl Sandburg

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. ~W. Somerset Maugham

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does. ~Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them. ~Dennis Gabor

"Always learn poems by heart," she said. "They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like the fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.'"~ Janet Fitch, 'White Oleander'

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. ~Wallace Stevens

Poetry is the development of an exclamation. ~Paul Valery

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. ~Robert Frost

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ~Percy Byshe Shelley

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~ Leonard Cohen

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry

Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. ~John Keats

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. - Anne Sexton

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way? ~ Emily Dickinson

The poet is the man made to solve the riddle of the universe who brings the whole soul of man into activity. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge